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Sept. 27, 2025, 4:52 PM EDTBy Tim Stelloh, Katie Wall and Erick MendozaAt least four people are dead after torrential rainfall and flooding in Arizona that officials described Saturday as catastrophic.Three of the deaths were in the small community of Globe, Gila County emergency manager Carl Medford told NBC News.Additional details about the deaths were not immediately available. Medford said that search-and-rescue teams were still looking for people.Authorities in Scottsdale said they recovered the body of a man near a vehicle that had been submerged in floodwaters. A spokesperson for the city’s police department identified him Saturday as Ander Polanco, 38.Polanco’s family had reported him missing Friday, the police department said in a statement. His body was found Saturday morning after the waters receded.The National Weather Service said that between 1 and 2 inches of rain fell across much of the metropolitan Phoenix area Friday. The city’s airport recorded 1.6 inches — the highest single-day total in seven years, the agency said.Video from the community of Miami, east of Phoenix, showed what appeared to be large hail and a road submerged in raging floodwaters. The weather service said that hail larger than an inch was seen across the region.Other video showed self-driving vehicles apparently stuck in floodwaters at Phoenix’s airport.Officials in the nearby community of Globe declared a state of emergency during a council meeting Saturday. Council members described the damage as devastating.“This is something that we could never even imagine, and here we are living it,” council member Freddy Rios said.Rios said the extent of the damage was unclear. In a statement earlier, the city said its historic downtown was unsafe, with compromised buildings and hazardous chemicals and debris, including propane tanks.Another council member, Mike Stapleton, described residents who were trapped and climbing on roofs. He said he heard an account of a pregnant woman swimming out of a flooded restaurant.Tim StellohTim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.Katie WallErick Mendoza

At least four people are dead after torrential rainfall and flooding in Arizona.

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Sept. 27, 2025, 2:07 PM EDTBy Kelly O’Donnell and Alexandra MarquezAt least 15 FBI agents were fired Friday in connection with their actions during the protests that followed the death of George Floyd, a source familiar with the terminations told NBC News.The agents had been assigned to help secure federal buildings during the demonstrations, when a tense standoff developed between a large crowd of protesters and a limited number of FBI personnel. Some agents were photographed kneeling, which the source described as a tactic meant to de-escalate the conflict.Protests erupted nationwide in 2020 after Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. The murder, captured on video, fueled demonstrations that called for racial justice and police accountability.The FBI declined to comment on the firings, citing personnel matters. The FBI Agents Association said in a statement that it “strongly condemn[s]” the firings as “unlawful,” saying they violated “the due process rights of those who risk their lives to protect our country.”The association sharply criticized Patel, accusing him of breaking the law with these and other firings at the FBI in recent months.“Leaders uphold the law — they don’t repeatedly break it. They respect due process, rather than hide from it,” the FBIAA statement said. “Patel’s dangerous new pattern of actions are weakening the Bureau because they eliminate valuable expertise and damage trust between leadership and the workforce, and make it harder to recruit and retain skilled agents — ultimately putting our nation at greater risk.”Police officers from Ferguson, Mo., join protesters to remember George Floyd by taking a knee in the parking lot of the police station on May 30, 2020.Robert Cohen / St. Louis Post-Dispatch via APThese firings come just weeks after three former top FBI officials sued Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, alleging that Patel fired them to stay in President Donald Trump’s good graces.One of them, former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, said in August that he was not given a reason for his termination, though he served the agency for almost 20 years.Earlier this year, Driscoll spoke out against the Trump administration’s efforts to fire agents who had worked on cases involving participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.At the time, Driscoll said he’d also refused a request from senior administration officials to provide a list of every FBI employee who investigated Jan. 6 rioters.One of the president’s first executive orders at the start of his second term was to pardon roughly 1,500 criminal defendants who had been charged for their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.During testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Patel defended the firings. He said the FBI “will only bring cases that are based in fact and law and have a legal basis to do so, and anyone that does otherwise will not be employed at the FBI.”Kelly O’DonnellKelly O’Donnell is Senior White House correspondent for NBC News.Alexandra MarquezAlexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.

At least 15 FBI agents were fired Friday in connection with their actions during the protests that followed the death of George Floyd, a source familiar with the terminations told.

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How Trump has changed the Oval Office

Since returning to the White House earlier this year, President Trump has added a slew of golden accents and objects to the Oval Office, NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell reports.

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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleBy Alexandra Marquez and Lindsey PipiaPresident Donald Trump on Saturday said that he was directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “provide all necessary Troops” to Portland.In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote that the troops would “protect War ravaged Portland” and protect ICE facilities that he claimed are “under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists.”Trump added that he is “authorizing Full Force, if necessary,” but didn’t clarify what that meant.Over the last several days, the president has repeatedly spoken negatively about Portland, including saying on Thursday that “anarchy” is taking place in the West Coast city.”You go out to Portland, people die out there. Many people have died over the years in Portland. Portland is, I don’t know how anybody lives there. It’s amazing, but it’s, it’s anarchy out there. That’s what they want. They want anarchy,” Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office on Thursday.On Friday, in separate comments in the Oval Office, the president said people in Portland are “out of control.””Have you seen Portland at all? If you take a look what’s happening in Portland. It’s it has been going on for years. Just people out of control, crazy. We’re going to stop that very soon,” Trump said.Alexandra MarquezAlexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.Lindsey PipiaLindsey Pipia is an Associate Producer for the 2024 Political Desk.

President Donald Trump on Saturday said that he was directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “provide all necessary Troops” to Portland

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Sept. 27, 2025, 9:29 AM EDTBy Freddie ClaytonThe giants of the Amazon are getting even bigger. A sweeping new study has found the rainforest’s largest trees are not only holding their ground, they’re thriving — growing, multiplying in number and continue to play a major role in mitigating the impacts of climate change.There was a 3.3% expansion in big trees per decade, scientists found, after tracking changes in 188 intact forest plots across the Amazon over the past 30 years.Led by almost 100 researchers from 60 universities in Brazil, the U.K. and elsewhere, the findings were published on Thursday in the journal “Nature Plants.”The authors attributed the growth to the rising amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the burning of gas, oil and coal.The paper was welcomed as evidence of forest resilience in the face of climate change, but scientists warned these big trees remain vulnerable as droughts, lightning and fires are increasing in frequency, while deforestation continues to pose a serious threat.There was an understanding that big trees were “expected to be vulnerable to climate change,” Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert, one of the study’s lead authors told NBC News in a telephone interview Saturday. “What we see here is actually they seem to be showing quite a resilience.”“We’re not seeing signs of them dying off,” Esquivel-Muelbert, who co-authored the study while at Britain’s University of Birmingham, but who has since moved on to the nearby University of Cambridge. “They are increasing in size and number as well.”Scientists stressed that while protecting intact forest areas was essential to stabilizing the climate, the Amazon cannot on its own offset the vast amount of carbon dioxide produced worldwide by cars, factories and power stations — and it remains under threat.The rainforest is a carbon sink, meaning it stores more carbon than it produces. Pushing the rainforest past its limit could accelerate climate change and have terrible consequences for local communities, including Indigenous groups who depend on it. Esquivel-Muelbert stressed it was difficult to predict how worsening climate change would have an impact in the future, and hesitated to say that increased CO2 benefitted the forest, warning it may cause bigger trees to become more exposed to other factors like drought.”We don’t know the consequences in the long run,” she said. Other factors, including deforestation, remain a colossal risk to the health of the Amazon. Fattening trees is, in some ways, a “positive news story,” said Rebecca Banbury Morgan, a lead author of the study from the University of Bristol. But it also means that the forest is now “more vulnerable to losing those trees.” “Although we have shown that trees in intact forest are still increasing in size, any benefits of this in terms of the carbon sink can be quite easily negated by deforestation and logging impacts, so preserving these intact forests is really a priority,” she told NBC News. Wildfires, deforestation and global warming could permanently destroy the water cycle that sustains parts of the Amazon rainforest if action is not taken in the coming decades, according to a separate study published last year in Nature.The study suggested that 10% to 47% of the landscape is at risk of transitioning away from rainforest by 2050 if warming and rates of deforestation aren’t dramatically curbed.Brazil’s Congress approved a bill in 2023 to relax environmental licensing to pave a highway cutting through the heart of the Amazon, and close to one of the last regions that still has large areas of pristine forestLosing a large portion of the Amazon could turn a key carbon sink into a source of emissions, as wildfires burn and plants and animals decompose, no longer able to survive. Freddie ClaytonFreddie Clayton is a freelance journalist based in London. 

A new study has found the Amazon rainforest’s biggest trees are growing because of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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Sept. 27, 2025, 7:30 AM EDTBy Jared PerloNEW YORK — The United States clashed with world leaders over artificial intelligence at the United Nations General Assembly this week, rejecting calls for global oversight as many pushed for new collaborative frameworks.While many heads of state, corporate leaders and prominent figures endorsed a need for urgent international collaboration on AI, the U.S. delegation criticized the role of the U.N. and pushed back on the idea of centralized governance of AI.Representing the U.S. in Wednesday’s Security Council meeting on AI, Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said, “We totally reject all efforts by international bodies to assert centralized control and global governance of AI.”The path to a flourishing future powered by AI does not lie in “bureaucratic management,” Kratsios said, but instead in “the independence and sovereignty of nations.”While Kratsios shot down the idea of combined AI governance, President Donald Trump said in his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday that the White House will be “pioneering an AI verification system that everyone can trust” to enforce the Biological Weapons Convention.“Hopefully, the U.N. can play a constructive role, and it will also be one of the early projects under AI,” Trump said. AI “could be one of the great things ever, but it also can be dangerous, but it can be put to tremendous use and tremendous good.”.In a statement to NBC News, a State Department spokesperson said, “The United States supports like-minded nations working together to encourage the development of AI in line with our shared values. The US position in international bodies is to vigorously advocate for international AI governance approaches that promote innovation, reflect American values, and counter authoritarian influence.”The comments rejecting collaborative efforts around AI governance stood in stark contrast to many of the initiatives being launched at the General Assembly.On Thursday, the U.N. introduced the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, the U.N.’s first body dedicated to AI governance involving all member states. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the body would “lay the cornerstones of a global AI ecosystem that can keep pace with the fastest-moving technology in human history.” Speaking after Guterres, Nobel Prize recipient Daron Acemoglu outlined the growing stakes of AI’s rapid development, arguing that “AI is the biggest threat that humanity has faced.”But in an interview with NBC News, Amandeep Singh Gill, the U.N.’s special envoy for digital and emerging technologies, told NBC News that the United States’ critical perception of the U.N.’s role in international AI governance was misconstrued.“I think it’s a misrepresentation to say that the U.N. is somehow getting into the regulation of AI,” Gill said. “These are not top-down power grabs in terms of regulation. The regulation stays where regulation can be done in sovereign jurisdictions.”Instead, the U.N.’s mechanisms “will provide platforms for international cooperation on AI governance,” Gill said.In remarks immediately following Kratsios’ comments, China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu said, “It is vital to jointly foster an open, inclusive, fair and nondiscriminatory environment for technological development and firmly oppose unilateralism and protectionism.”“We support the U.N. playing a central role in AI governance,” Ma said.One day after Kratsios’ remarks at the Security Council, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez seemed to push back on Kratsios and gave full-throated support for international cooperation on AI and the U.N.’s role in AI governance.“We need to coordinate a shared vision of AI at a global level, with the U.N. as the legitimate and inclusive forum to forge consensus around common interests,” Sánchez said. “The time is now, when multilateralism is being most questioned and attacked, that we need to reaffirm how suitable it is in addressing challenges such as those represented by AI.”Reacting to the week’s developments, Renan Araujo, director of programs for the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, told NBC News that “no one wants to see a burdensome, bureaucratic governance structure, and the U.S. has succeeded in starting bilateral and minilateral coalitions. At the same time, we should expect AI-related challenges to become more transnational in nature as AI capabilities become more advanced.”This is not the first time the U.N. has addressed AI, having passed the Global Digital Compact last year. The compact laid the foundation for the AI dialogue and for an independent international scientific panel to evaluate AI’s abilities, risks and pathways forward. Guterres announced that nominations to this panel are now open.While Thursday’s event marked the launch of the global dialogue and panel, the dialogue will have its first full meeting in Geneva in summer 2026, in tandem with the International Telecommunication Union’s annual AI for Good summit. The dialogue’s exact functions and first actions will be charted out over the coming months.Jared PerloJared Perlo is a writer and reporter at NBC News covering AI. He is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.

The United States clashed with world leaders over artificial intelligence at the United Nations General Assembly this week.

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Sept. 27, 2025, 5:30 AM EDTBy Berkeley Lovelace Jr.For people who rely on certain prescription drugs, including weight loss, asthma and cancer medications, President Donald Trump’s post announcing 100% tariffs on foreign brand-name drugs offers little clarity on when — or if — medications might see price hikes. “Starting October 1st, 2025, we will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any branded or patented Pharmaceutical Product, unless a Company IS BUILDING their Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plant in America,” Trump said on Truth Social late Thursday. “‘IS BUILDING’ will be defined as, ‘breaking ground’ and/or ‘under construction.’ There will, therefore, be no Tariff on these Pharmaceutical Products if construction has started.”Experts say Trump’s post raises a lot of questions. Here are five major ones. What drugs will be impacted?Trump’s post doesn’t specify whether brand-name drugmakers with an existing U.S. plant would be exempt, whether that exemption would include all their products, or whether it would only be for the drugs manufactured at the U.S. site. Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, makers of the weight loss drugs Wegovy and Zepound, respectively, have announced plans to invest in U.S. manufacturing. But it’s unclear if their intent to invest will warrant an exemption. On Tuesday, Lilly announced plans for a $6.5 billion manufacturing facility in Houston that will produce Zepbound and its other GLP-1 drug, Mounjaro, following a recent commitment to build a $5 billion plant near Richmond, Virginia. Novo Nordisk, a Danish company, said in June it would spend $4.1 billion to construct a second GLP-1 fill-finish plant in Clayton, North Carolina.AstraZeneca, which makes the asthma drug Symbicort, also announced in July that it will invest $50 billion over the next five years to expand its research and development and manufacturing footprint in the U.S. Many other popular brand-name drugs, however, are primarily manufactured overseas, particularly in Europe, said Rena Conti, an associate professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.Botox, made by Allergen, and the cancer drug Keytruda from drugmaker Merck are made in Ireland. (Keytruda’s manufacturing has increasingly moved to the United States in recent years, but it’s not clear if that would earn an exemption from Trump’s tariffs.)Others, including some for blood and lung cancers, as well as vaccines, are made in places like India and China, Conti said. “I think what’s most at risk here are branded products that come from China and India,” she said. The E.U. and Japan already have trade agreements in place that cover pharmaceuticals, she added, and it’s unclear whether the new tariff will supersede that. Will patients see prices increase?Only 1 in 10 of the prescriptions filled in the U.S. are for brand-name drugs; the vast majority are for generics, which are much cheaper and will not be affected by these tariffs. Whether patients see price increases will depend on how many drugmakers receive exemptions — and on whether companies choose to pass those costs on to patients at the pharmacy counter, said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. ​​“Ultimately, tariffs are taxes on patients,” Kesselheim said, “and to the extent that drug companies see increases in cost due to tariffs, they will pass those costs on to patients.”Some companies may decide not to pass the costs along. So far, the 15% tariffs on imports from the E.U. haven’t translated into big price hikes for U.S. patients, Conti noted. To be sure, a 100% tariff would be far more costly for a company. Price hikes may not start right away, as drugmakers find out whether they qualify for an exemption. There also might be a lag since U.S. law prevents drugmakers from increasing the price of drugs faster than inflation.“What if you’re doing updates to the plant you currently have? What if you’re planning a facility? Do those count?” Kesselheim said. “It’s all very ambiguous.”Some patients may not notice additional price hikes at all, given how costly brand-name drugs already are in the U.S., said Arthur Caplan, the head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. “I can certainly predict that some patients will immediately feel price increases that will shock them on some of these drugs,” Caplan said.Could insurers absorb the costs?Insurers and middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, could try to negotiate drugmakers or absorb some of the tariff-related costs, Caplan said.It’s more likely, however, that they’d pass it on to patients in the short term, potentially in the form of a larger copay, he said.It’s not only patients with private insurance that should be worried about price hikes, Kesselheim said. Those who get their drugs covered through government health programs could also see price increases.“The government is the largest purchaser of prescription drugs in the market, through Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, so it’s really the government or government payers that are going to see the largest impact on price increases,” he said. Will tariffs spur more U.S. drug manufacturing?It’s unlikely, Kesselheim said. The decision to build a plant “is a complicated and expensive one” that requires several regulatory hurdles and years of planning.Conti noted that by the time new manufacturing plants are completed, Trump would likely be out of office.“It is somewhere between two years and five years to get new production facilities built,” she said, “and it can be in the millions of dollars depending on whether the product that you’re making is a small molecule drug or a biologic.”Even putting money back into an existing plant isn’t quick.“If you want to switch a line or retool a factory to make a product, then we’re talking about somewhere between 18 to 36 months to do that,” Conti said, “because you have to show the U.S. regulator that you can make it at this factory at scale, and the product is what it says it is, or is high quality and meets the quality standards of the U.S.”In a statement, Alex Schriver, a spokesperson for the trade group the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said “most innovative medicines prescribed in America are already made in America” and companies continue to invest in the U.S.“Tariffs risk those plans because every dollar spent on tariffs is a dollar that cannot be invested in American manufacturing or the development of future treatments and cures,” Schriver said. “Medicines have historically been exempt from tariffs because they raise costs and could lead to shortages.”What about shortages?If Trump keeps his focus solely on brand-name drugs, U.S. patients are unlikely to face shortages, Kesselheim said.“Their profits are just so, so far beyond this tariff cost that they could probably be OK or raise the prices of the drugs,” he said. “They would probably not stop production as a result.”But that excludes, he added, some smaller companies who may make niche brand-name products and may not have the resources to take on the extra costs. If tariffs extend to generics, the risk is far greater, Caplan added. Unlike brand-name drugs, generic drugs are typically sold at close to the cost they’re made, he said, which makes it difficult for companies to justify the cost of building a new facility. They’d likely be forced to walk away from production or close their plants altogether.Berkeley Lovelace Jr.Berkeley Lovelace Jr. is a health and medical reporter for NBC News. He covers the Food and Drug Administration, with a special focus on Covid vaccines, prescription drug pricing and health care. He previously covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with CNBC.

For people who rely on certain prescription drugs, including weight loss, asthma and cancer medications, President Donald Trump’s post announcing 100% tariffs on foreign brand-name drugs offers little clarity on.

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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleSept. 27, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Allan Smith, Sahil Kapur and Shannon PettypieceDemocrats were swept out of power last year as they suffered political pain from rising costs. Now, President Donald Trump is overseeing stubborn inflation, a slowing job market and anxiety over his tariffs, and Democrats are determined to make his party pay the price.With the 2026 midterm cycle on the horizon, the economy is shaping up to once again play a dominant role. Democrats are keenly aware that what sunk them last time could be their ticket back to power.Trump’s own daring promise is complicating the situation for his party after he told voters in 2024, “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day 1.”That’s a message Democrats will be emphasizing.“He’s promised us this golden age. It’s not happening,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., a member of the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee. “He promised the renewal of all his manufacturing jobs — not happening. Promised tariffs could restore all this stuff — not happening at all.”Economic anxiety is high. The August jobs report showed only 22,000 new jobs — a paltry total compared to recent years. Prices on a variety of goods and services rose more than expected in August, with year-over-year inflation growing to 2.9%, the highest rate since January.The cost of household staples like coffee and beef are soaring even as the rise in food prices has slowed from the decades-high inflation seen in 2022. Overall, grocery prices were up 2.7% in August compared to a year earlier, the biggest increase in two years. Electricity costs are rising, too, driven in part by the growth of AI data centers. The August NBC News poll found that 45% of voters said rising costs are their top economic concern.Trump has sought to reshape much of the economy, with sweeping tariffs, large tax cuts and pressure on the Federal Reserve and private companies. That formula has coincided with some bright spots Trump and his allies have promoted: The stock market has seen substantial gains, in part because of the AI boom that Trump’s administration has sought to bolster. U.S. gross domestic product grew at a 3.8% annual pace between April and June after shrinking earlier this year, the Department of Commerce said in its second upward revision on Thursday.Yet his opponents say that the president is now trying to shift attention away from the topic. At a White House event on Monday about autism, Trump discouraged reporters from talking about the economy.“Let’s just make it on this subject,” Trump said, referring to the autism announcement. “I’d rather not talk about some nonsense on the economy. I will say this: The economy is unbelievable.”The headwinds have cut into what was long one of Trump’s advantages: Voters trusted him to strengthen the economy. It was a dynamic that helped boost his campaign with voters who were angry with price increases under President Joe Biden and wanted a return to Trump’s pre-Covid economy.Recent polls show voters have soured on Trump’s handling of the economy. A Fox News poll this month found that 52% of voters believe the administration has made the economy worse — the same number who said in January the Biden administration was doing so. Trump’s performance on cost of living was his worst issue, with 67% of voters disapproving. What’s more, 63% disapprove of his handling of tariffs, and 60% of his economic efforts.Now, Democrats are seeking to unify around an economic message they think can bring together their fractured party as they reel from a loss to Trump. But Republicans expressed confidence that once their “big, beautiful bill” starts to sink in, and as uncertainty around tariffs dies down, economic sentiment will turn in their favor.Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic Senate candidate, said she’s hearing economic concerns “all over the state right now.”“I’m hearing this most acutely with young people, people who might have recently graduated from college, have degrees, who just cannot find a job right now, and [are] certainly feeling the tightening economy, but also the impacts of AI,” McMorrow said, adding that she is telling people: “This is not a global pandemic that we’re in right now. This is also not a recession like we saw in 2007-09. The inflation that we are seeing right now is entirely man-made, and it’s caused by Donald Trump.”’Waiting and seeing’There are other potential problems for Republicans.Consumer spending is holding steady but being driven by the top 10% of earners. Young men — a population that played a huge role in Trump’s victory — have been hit hard in the slowing job market. Labor Department data showed initial jobless claims for the week ending Sept. 6 jumped by 263,000 — the most since October 2021 — though initial jobless claims fell to 218,000 for the week ending Sept. 20.Americans’ view of capitalism is falling too. A Gallup survey this month showed 54% of Americans hold a positive view of the economic system, the lowest level the poll has recorded.“There is a big cohort of people who voted for Donald Trump because they really, sincerely believed that he was going to bring down the price of their daily necessities,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said. “And almost everything is significantly more expensive.”Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said it’s too early to grade Republicans’ performance on lowering costs because “the economy doesn’t move on a dime.” But she acknowledged that they need to make tangible progress by the 2026 midterms.“The problem right now is the people who are doing well, the people who are consuming the most, are the very wealthy,” Lummis said. “It is the middle class and lower middle class that is not buying because their salaries aren’t keeping up with inflation or interest rates are too high to buy a home. They’re treading water, and so we have to focus on the middle class in order to alleviate concerns about a bad outcome in the 2026 elections.”The White House argued that the economy is in better shape than other measures indicate, pointing to wage increases, a lower rate of inflation than in Biden’s term, a job market they say favors native-born workers, and surging stocks, among other measures.“Joe Biden’s reckless policies destroyed the economy, but President Trump is fixing it in record time to usher in the Golden Age of America — inflation has cooled, wages are on the rise, real consumer spending rose in July, manufacturing jobs are being reshored, and over half a million good-paying jobs have been created in the private sector,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said, adding that Americans “will continue to feel economic relief in the months ahead as … massive tax cuts, deregulation, and energy dominance continue to materialize.”The White House has also highlighted a major revision this month from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing job growth was much slower than originally reported between April 2024 and March 2025, saying it shows slower job growth dates back to Biden. Trump fired the head of the BLS — and nominated a MAGA ally in her place — after a particularly weak July jobs report.There has been a steep decline in the immigrant workforce under Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda. Vice President JD Vance and other conservatives have said the exodus of foreign-born workers can explain the weaker job growth, but that it creates more employment opportunities for native-born Americans. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, argued Trump’s job market has been worse for U.S.-born workers, pointing to BLS data showing an increased unemployment rate among this group.Jared Bernstein, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under Biden, said he sees the economy “slowing in ways that are concerning” and warned of the potential for stagflation.“Employers and businesses are in a bit of a hiring freeze and investment freeze,” Bernstein said. “They’re sitting on their hands, waiting and seeing what’s going to come of the trade war, the deportations, the chaos, the Federal Reserve badgering, the DOGE cuts. It’s all unsettling for businesses who like a much calmer environment as a backdrop.”Fed cuts interest rates citing “risks” to jobs market01:44In a move Trump long pushed for, the Federal Reserve last week cut interest rates by 0.2 percentage points. In his news conference after lowering interest rates, Fed Chair Jerome Powell tied the cut directly to issues in the labor market.“You see people who are sort of more at the margins, and younger people, minorities are having a hard time finding jobs,” Powell said.He added that the economy is being bolstered by “unusually large amounts of economic activity through the AI build-out and corporate investment.” And he said that while consumer spending numbers exceeded expectations, they appear skewed toward high earners.“So it’s not a bad economy or anything like that,” Powell said, adding: “But from a policy standpoint … of what we’re trying to accomplish, it’s challenging to know what to do.”Trump’s tariffsMuch of the existing economic uncertainty has centered on the president’s tariff agenda. The dust appears to be more settled now: Some tariffs have been lowered, new trade agreements have been reached with key partners, and a number of categories, including some electronics, have been exempted.A White House official said uncertainty on passage of the “big, beautiful bill” and on tariffs has “largely been resolved.”“You can now plan around what the tariff rate is going to be,” this person said. “We’re not in flux anymore.”So far, Trump’s vow to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. has yet to materialize, with industry continuing to cut back on the number of workers. The U.S. lost 12,000 manufacturing jobs in August amid a wider slowdown in the labor market, according to BLS data. The Trump administration has pointed to manufacturing investments, noting factories can’t open overnight.Trump’s tariffs have weighed on manufacturing companies now having to pay tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, along with imported machinery and parts. Companies have also continued to ramp up automation, requiring fewer workers to make the same amount of goods.Federal Reserve data released Sept. 16 showed a mixed picture for the manufacturing sector last month, with factory production ticking up in August after declining in July. The increase was driven by a rebound in auto production while other areas, like companies making machinery and metal products, saw declines.Steve Moore, a senior economic adviser to Trump in his first term, believes the economy is in a good spot, pointing to similar data points as the White House. But he cautioned that “at some point, some of these [tariff] costs are going to be passed down to consumers, no question about it,” though he said the country could still see benefits down the road.There is an economic uncertainty that has the president and his allies concerned: a case before the Supreme Court that could lead to his tariffs being overturned. Moore said the White House is “very keyed into” the case.“I think it’s going to be disruptive,” Moore said if the court overturns the tariffs. “And I don’t think anybody really knows what would happen. Will they have to return the money to the people who paid that? Will they pay the taxes? And what happens to trade deals? It would be havoc.”’You can’t fool people on the economy’Democrats want to frame a straightforward economic argument for the midterm elections: Trump promised to lower prices immediately upon taking office, and yet costs are rising.“What we must do is not just compare this economy to Biden’s,” Beyer said, “but compare it to what Trump said he was going to do.”In a memo marking Trump’s first six months in office, the Democratic National Committee mentioned lowering prices as the top promise Trump had broken upon taking office. A memo this month from the Bipartisan Cost Coalition, an anti-Trump group launched by former aides to Biden and President George W. Bush, said 2026 candidates “can succeed in this environment by having the courage to challenge Trump’s dishonest narratives and draw a line between chaos and the rising cost of living.”Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said GOP prospects in 2026 will turn on whether they can sell Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and improve voters’ confidence in their finances.Republicans are eager to promote the bill’s new tax cuts and credits, including tax breaks on overtime and tipped wages as well as expensing and deduction provisions they believe will encourage new investment in the U.S. and grow the job market.“It’s going to depend on whether or not we can actually see the benefits and get the information on the benefits out about what the reconciliation package did,” Rounds said.So far, Trump himself has not taken to the trail to promote the landmark legislation, though Vice President JD Vance has been visiting key battlegrounds to do so.The legislation’s cuts to health insurance programs already threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs. This month, a hospital chain in Virginia announced a consolidation it said is in part necessitated by “the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the resulting realities for healthcare delivery.”A Republican operative working on Senate races said Trump’s legislative package will give business leaders certainty on taxes over the next few years. But this person was mindful of how the job market looks now, particularly for younger voters struggling to find entry-level jobs.“Trump realizes that you really need to gas this thing up to get people hiring and get confidence in the market,” this person said. “So it’s not an overnight switch that the president could flip to get people hiring young men into the economy.”A Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted this month found that while just 40% of voters approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, Republicans still held a 7-point edge over Democrats on which party voters trust more on the issue.Pennsylvania’s new Democratic Party Chairman Eugene DePasquale said he wants to get Keystone State Democrats to “focus like a laser” on economic issues.“But it’s one thing to have people be upset about Trump,” DePasquale said. “It’s another thing for them to vote for us. … We’ve also got to show we’re listening and putting real ideas on the table to try to win him back.”Moore said Republicans will need “to remind people of how bad things were under Biden” while framing the president’s signature legislation not as a tax cut but as a job creation bill.“Look, you can’t fool people on the economy,” Moore said. “People know what’s going on. They know what it costs to buy groceries. They know what jobs are available. When Biden was saying, ‘Oh, [inflation is] transitory,’ and so on, it didn’t fool people. So these policies have to be shown to be working.”Allan SmithAllan Smith is a political reporter for NBC News.Sahil KapurSahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.Shannon PettypieceShannon Pettypiece is senior policy reporter for NBC News.

Democrats were swept out of power last year as they suffered political pain from rising costs.

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